19 College Fraternities With Top Wall Street Alumnihttp://www.businessinsider.com/frats-with-wall-street-alums-2014-8/comments
en-usWed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500Tue, 31 Mar 2015 18:43:48 -0400Julia La Rochehttp://www.businessinsider.com/c/53f9d28becad043f5ab683fcfamullarSun, 24 Aug 2014 07:54:51 -0400http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53f9d28becad043f5ab683fc
Across the country hundreds of companies are helping reverse a long trend of sending American manufacturing jobs overseas.
They're doing what's known as reshoring, which is bringing production back home to the United States instead of chasing cheap labor and other incentives in developing nations.
Bringing Jobs Home
During the last four years about a 100,000 jobs have returned to the United States, according to the Reshoring Initiative, a non-profit group based in Chicago.
Many factors contribute to the United States regaining a competitive edge over countries like India, Japan, and China.
"Chinese wages have been rising, expressed in U.S. dollars, at 15 to 18 percent per year, for the last 18 years," Harry Moser, founder of the Reshoring Initiative, said. "Whereas in the U.S., it's stayed stationary."
Other reasons include delivery time, quality, and innovation.
"Turns out you can't innovate the product very well if you don't manufacture the product," Moser said. "So when you can bring together the engineering manager, the engineer and the factory worker, get them together as a team, improve the product, improve the process by which the product is made, it works a lot better."
Unplugging from China?
Chesapeake Bay Candle Company opened its first domestic manufacturing facility in 2011.
"We've created 80 jobs in the last three years," Mei Xu, the company's owner and CEO, said.
Xu started the company in 1994 in her Maryland basement.
"We were so impatient waiting for molds to fill our candles with. We saw a lot of soup cans laying around the kitchen and we said, 'Wow, these are great molds,'" she said. "So we used them. The first set of samples were made with those molds."
Despite its U.S. origins, Xu opened her first factory overseas because of the cheaper labor cost.
"If you have a mold, you first finish it by pouring wax in it and then you have to manipulate the texture so that it achieves the desired result," explained Xu. "So each candle would be priced at $40 to $50 and its not going to be a market that can accept that."
The company grew quickly for about 10 years, until the 2005 recession blew in.
"Consumers stopped purchasing as they used to in 2005 or before that," Xu said. "So our retail partners demanded price reduction."
That change caused Xu to re-evaluate her decision to do business from China. In the end, it made sense to bring a big part of the company's manufacturing back home.
Risky Homecoming
Reshoring, however, can be risky and many attempts are unsuccessful. Some experts blame those results on the U.S. government.
"On the one hand there's the reshoring initiative, which is this push to bring high paying manufacturing jobs and activities back to the U.S.," Greg Husisian, an expert on international trade issues, said.
"At the same time the U.S. government has, since probably about 2008, gotten really serious about enforcing U.S. regulations governing exports and international conduct," he explained. "People are being encouraged to bring their manufacturing back here, but they don't realize that the cost of complying to these regulations and managing the risks of them can be quite substantial. So they work at cross purposes."
The opening of the Chesapeake Bay Candle, Glen Burnie facility, was delayed for six months because of the process of getting a permit.
"They looked at us as if we're crazy and said, 'Um, we haven't given a license in two decades, but we think if you look at hospital code, school code, and restaurant code, you're safe,'" Xu said.
During the entire delay, they still had to pay for the facility and key staff members although the doors remained closed. Eventually the permits came through, and the Chesapeake Bay Candle Company became one of the success stories.
"If we hadn't moved manufacturing back, we wouldn't be growing like we're growing," Xu said.
Home Grown Business
About 50 percent of the company's business currently comes from the Glen Burnie factory. But after adding a new production line, they have the ability to triple that number in the future.
"Word has been out that we have moved back, and we have people knocking on our doors saying, 'Can you produce for us?'" Xu said. "There are so many companies that we wouldn't dream of giving us an order, easily, because they require made in the U.S.A."
Xu also has a message to the government as they encourage more companies to come home.
"Do not become a business prevention if you are trying to be a business creation center," she said.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53f9d1b86bb3f75e027af3f3famullarSun, 24 Aug 2014 07:51:20 -0400http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53f9d1b86bb3f75e027af3f3
British society, its political class and community leaders must share the blame for the "jihad generation" of young men and women joining the Islamic State terrorist organization, a former senior Muslim army officer has said.
Afzal Amin, who was chairman of the Armed Forces Muslim Association, a conflict strategist and a military adviser on winning "hearts and minds" in Afghanistan, has said young Muslims in inner-city Britain have been left disenfranchised by politics and let down by imams and other community leaders.
Amin, 39, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Dudley North, also called for troops on the ground in Iraq to combat the escalating threat from Islamic State (IS), arguing that the British Army, with years of experience in counter-insurgency in the Middle East, has the capability to defeat them.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53f8bfed6bb3f7832455123cSumi AllenSat, 23 Aug 2014 12:23:09 -0400http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53f8bfed6bb3f7832455123c
YAY NEPOTISM!!! None bothered to sell Duhmerican stocks in Macau... yet robbed us instead.
Cream sure didn't rise to the top in this goofy country, now did it?http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53f7635269bedd901d297144HammermanFri, 22 Aug 2014 11:35:46 -0400http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53f7635269bedd901d297144
Former....Yes Former. This was the rage like 5-10 years ago
Today it's a little different the frats seem to be drifting away from wall street and silicon valley.